The Bush Blizzard

I have heard many stories lately about Tony Snow and his personal attitude towards friends and his peers. I have heard from Jonathon Turley that the guy was funny and caring, especially regarding children.

Of course, just like another recently deceased TV News guy, the TV pundits fall all over themselves explaining to the folks what a great person Tony was, etc.

But let us not forget one crucial fact. This man backed a foreign invasion that was instrumental in killing hundreds of thousands (if not Millions) of people, including many Americans. This man sat on his TV News Anchor Chair and completely misled people via the lies and deceit of the Bush Administration. This man who loved his children didn’t seem to care much for Iraqi children.

I was never a fan of Tony Snowjob. I thought he was a shill and a totally brainwashed sycophant without an honorable bone in his body.

You see, it takes very little to care for children, especially your own. But to be able to love and honor your enemy is a true source of integrity and morality. If Tony ever showed that, it was NOT in public. So, I never had any real opportunity to see the “real” Tony, as some describe him. But the fake Tony was nothing more than a mouthpiece for evil.

The Smirking Chimp has an article by Gregg Gordon that ends with the best explanation of my feelings regarding Tony Snowjob:

I’m not one to dance on the graves of the dead, and by all accounts, Snow also contained an uncommon decency on a personal level. He would remember the sick children and quiet aspirations of even casual acquaintances and go out of his way to boost their spirits when needed. I heard these stories even before his death, and that’s no small thing. Who knows — maybe it’s the only thing. And his personal courage and good humor in the face of his disease should be inspiring to anyone.

But he spent his public career promoting a political ideology, party, and finally a president who brought on the premature, unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents and diminished the lives of millions more, and will continue to do so long after he’s gone. He received great financial rewards for it, and he applauded the even greater enrichment of many even less deserving than he. And if there’s any consolation to his own premature death, it’s that he won’t have to witness the worst consequences of his actions, which I suspect are still to come.

So the best and kindest send-off I can give him is this, and may it be afforded me someday:

God have mercy on his soul.

Rednecks: Turn OFF That Damn TV

Because THIS is the kinda of shit that has brainwashed you:

h/t jperryam

I become livid when I listen to these assholes speak what can only be considered total bullshit.

But I bet there were thousands, if not millions who fall for this.

So, according to them, my $50K in credit card debt doesn’t really count. Good to know, but I’m sure Visa is going to be chapped.

Do You Want Flips With Those Flops?

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report has been compiling the flip-flop express’s flip-flops and mental gymnastics and has provided this list for us to evaluate:

National Security Policy

1. McCain thought Bush’s warrantless wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.

2. McCain insisted that everyone, even “terrible killers,” “the worst kind of scum of humanity,” and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,” even if that means “releasing some of them.” McCain now believes the opposite.

3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

4. In February, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.

5. McCain favored closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay before he was against it.

6. When Barack Obama talked about going after terrorists in Pakistani mountains with Predators, McCain criticized him for it. He’s since come to the opposite conclusion.

Foreign Policy

7. McCain was for kicking Russia out of the G8 before he was against it.

8. McCain supported moving “toward normalization of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.

9. McCain believed the United States should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.

10. McCain believed the United States should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.

11. McCain is both for and against a “rogue state rollback” as a focus of his foreign policy vision.

12. McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.

13. McCain was against divestment from South Africa before he was for it.

Military Policy

14. McCain recently claimed that he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”

15. McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions, concluding, on multiple occasions, that a Korea-like presence is both a good idea and a bad idea.

16. McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”

17. McCain has repeatedly said it’s a dangerous mistake to tell the “enemy” when U.S. troops would be out of Iraq. In May, McCain announced that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013.

18. McCain was against expanding the GI Bill before he was for it.

Domestic Policy

19. McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)

20. McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.

21. McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.

22. He argued that the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.

23. In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won’t commit to supporting a regulation bill he’s co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris’ former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.

24. McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.

25. McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.

26. McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.

27. McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. before he supported it.

28. McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

29. McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

30. In 2005, McCain endorsed intelligent design creationism, a year later he said the opposite, and a few months after that, he was both for and against creationism at the same time.

Economic Policy

31. McCain was against Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy before he was for them.

32. John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated,” and “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a “very strong” understanding of economics.

33. McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal. And soon after that, McCain abandoned his second position and went back to his first.

34. McCain said in 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and falsely argued that he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.

35. McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.

36. McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”

37. McCain has changed his entire economic worldview on multiple occasions.

38. McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off economically than they were before Bush took office.

Energy Policy

39. McCain supported the moratorium on coastal drilling; now he’s against it.

40. McCain recently announced his strong opposition to a windfall tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.

41. McCain endorsed a cap-and-trade policy with a mandatory emissions cap. In mid-June, McCain announced he wants the caps to be voluntary.

42. McCain explained his belief that a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax would provide an immediate economic stimulus. Shortly thereafter, he argued the exact opposite.

43. McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.

Immigration Policy

44. McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now he’s against it.

45. On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own bill.

46. In April, McCain promised voters that he would secure the borders “before proceeding to other reform measures.” Two months later, he abandoned his public pledge, pretended that he’d never made the promise in the first place, and vowed that a comprehensive immigration reform policy has always been, and would always be, his “top priority.”

Judicial Policy and the Rule of Law

47. McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.

48. McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.

49. McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.

Campaign, Ethics, and Lobbying Reform

50. McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.

51. In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.

52. McCain supported a campaign-finance bill, which bore his name, on strengthening the public-financing system. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation.

Politics and Associations

53. McCain wanted political support from radical televangelist John Hagee. Now he doesn’t.

54. McCain wanted political support from radical televangelist Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.

55. McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry’s Democratic ticket in 2004.

56. McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church.

57. McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.

58. In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

59. McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

60. McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the honorary co-chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

61. McCain believed powerful right-wing activist/lobbyist Grover Norquist was “corrupt, a shill for dictators, and (with just a dose of sarcasm) Jack Abramoff’s gay lover.” McCain now considers Norquist a key political ally.

And while I realize there are some who believe these constant flip-flops are irrelevant, I respectfully disagree.

How People Power Would Handle Telecom Immunity & Warrantless Wiretapping

July 9, 2008 www.votenader.org www.officialnaderstore.com

Listen to Ralph Nader’s audio message on the Senate vote on FISA - here. Good morning. This is Ralph Nader. Today is Wednesday July 9, 2008. And I’m listening now to the debate on the Senate floor over legislation that will give President Bush new warrantless eavesdropping powers. The bill will also grant immunity to telecom companies for cooperating with Mr. Bush in his illegal warrantless wiretapping on Americans - on any one of you. We were taught as young children that in our democracy, under our system of justice, nobody is above the law - nobody. But this bill puts the President and the telecom companies above the law. It also conveniently assures a coverup of Mr. Bush’s past crimes in this area - of wiretapping and surveillance. On the Senate floor, Senator Feingold has just warned his colleagues that the Senate “will regret that we passed this legislation.” As my home state Senator, Christopher Dodd, said: “If we pass this legislation, the Senate will ratify a domestic spying regime that has already concentrated far too much unaccountable power in the President’s hands and will place the telecommunications companies above the law.” What does it say that Senators Dodd, Feingold, Harry Reid, and Patrick Leahy have led the valiant fight against this bill, but Senator Obama has said he will vote for it? Again, this bill gives the President vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and allows the government - for the first time ever - to tap into America’s telecommunications networks with no judicial warrant requirement. President Bush and the Democrats who support him argue that the telecommunications companies were only doing what they were told by the President and were acting as “patriotic corporate citizens.” This is pure hogwash. First of all, corporations aren’t citizens. Second, the President can’t order anyone - citizens or corporations - to break the law. This legislation, which the Senate is debating right now, sets up a double standard of justice. Break the law as a citizen, go to jail. Break the law as a corporation, go to Washington and get immunity. Remember, there were telecom companies, such as Qwest, that refused to follow President Bush’s illegal wiretap orders and chose instead to obey the laws of the land. The Senate is now posed to bury the rule of law. What to do? Join Nader/Gonzalez - the candidacy that will shift the power from the corporations back into the hands of the people. We strongly oppose the wiretap surveillance legislation that Obama and McCain support. We stand strongly with the American people and for the Constitution. The Nader/Gonzalez campaign is now at six percent in the most recent CNN poll. We’re in the middle of a fundraising drive right now to put Nader/Gonzalez on the ballot in 45 states by September 20. Help us get there now. Go to votenader.org. Donate to your heart’s content. For the Constitution. For liberty. For freedom. For justice. For shifting the power from the corporations, back into the hands of the American people. “We the people” are the first words of the Constitution - we should always remember. Thank you. PS: We invite your comments to the blog. Your contribution could be doubled. Public campaign financing may match your contribution total up to $250.

B’Man’s Hypocrite Watch: Keith Olbermann

B’Man: OK, I ragged the man already, but saw this posted the other day at The Smirking Chimp by Michael Kwiatkowski and thought, “What better way than to add this as an exclamation mark to my presentation.” Keith either needs to back off his indefensible bullshit, apologize or prepare for a loss of dedicated viewers.

Olbermann has sold out.

I just got done reading Keith Olbermann’s tortured excuse for not calling out Barack Obama on his FISA cave, and frankly, it’s as lame as it can get. Sorry, Keith, but you’ve sold out to the far right without even realizing it. Here’s why.

Throughout this campaign, you’ve been doing little or nothing but bash Hillary Clinton for all the wrong reasons. While the senator supposedly representing New York has undoubtedly made plenty of verbal gaffes and has a poor record of defending the Constitution against the shrub and his gargoyle, you focused your rage exclusively upon her, and for all the wrong things. One example is her suggestion that the bigot bloc might not vote for Obama, which is true: no matter how much he panders to the far right, no matter how often he bashes blacks to their faces, the bigots in this country simply are not going to vote for a black man for president; they’d sooner cast their ballots for a white woman. You, however, joined in with those who relentlessly attacked her for pointing out this fundamental truth.

The selling your soul to the Obama fan club isn’t apparent only in your relentless attacks on Clinton; you’ve failed time and again to jump on your candidate of choice for things you would never have let others get away with. In a piece by Counterpunch’s Gregory Kafoury, the writer reminds us that the senator supposedly representing Illinois has committed a slew of misdeeds on the campaign trail that include:

- Obama announced a new financial team of supply-side economists led by Jason Furman, famous for declaring that it would be “damaging to working people” if Wal-Mart were to raise its wages and benefits. Obama had recently criticized Clinton for serving on the Wal-Mart board, declaring, “I won’t shop there.” In the Audacity of Hope, he sympathized with “Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope they’ll have enough money to support their children.”

-When questioned in a Fortune interview about his promise to renegotiate NAFTA to protect workers and the environment, Obama replied, “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.”

- In a close congressional primary race in Georgia, Obama endorsed a troglodyte incumbent – a “Bush enabler” – over an exemplary progressive insurgent.

- In a speech to the Israeli lobby, he moved to the right of Israel’s government by ruling out negotiations with Hamas. A day earlier, Obama had told Cuban exile groups that he would only sit down with Raul Castro if the exiles had a seat at the table, a precondition that Cuba will never agree to.

- Obama refused to criticize recent Israeli war maneuvers and accompanying threats to launch massive air attacks on Iran. He failed to even urge restraint.

- Just as a move was growing in the Senate to strip the House-passed Telecom bill of its immunity provisions, Obama declared his support for the House version. Obama’s opposition to immunity had been our best hope to learn whose phones and emails had been wiretapped by the Bush administration, and to punish those Telecom companies that assisted this massive criminal enterprise.

This last is especially relevant, because while you dismiss Glenn Greenwald’s critique of you, the fact remains that you would have ripped into any other prominent politician for caving in to the shrub on FISA and telecomm immunity. That it happens to be Obama selling out to the far right in exchange for power changes nothing; it’s still a craven capitulation to the shrub, no matter how one tries to spin it.

You’ve lost your impartiality, Keith, and for that you must apologize. Not only that, you must recognize that it is more important to tell the Truth than to get another corporate-conservative Democrat elected to office. You’re an intelligent man, Keith. You know as well as anyone else that if Obama will not stand up and defend the Constitution and the rule of law as a senator running for president, he certainly won’t do it as president. I expect to see you on the air from now on, ripping into Obama with all the passion and fury you reserved for the shrub and Hillary Clinton. The enemy is not confined to the ranks of the Republican Party: it is the entirety of the power structure, and this includes Obama.

You owe it to us, your viewers, to return to the standard you helped set by going after all the powerful, not just those you dislike.

Must Avoid TV: When Olbermann Became Owned

He used to put on a decent show. He would rave and rant at the right times. He made it “acceptable” to accuse the President of his shenanigans and evil-doing. He helped many Americans realize that the Right has taken over, by brute force, the airways and mindset of the American people, even though many Americans knew these things to be against their core values and beliefs.

Keith used to help me to feel like we had hope that the political movement “could” be changed. That maybe, just maybe, someone from the progressive side of the political spectrum could actually become a voice again. But, slowly and surely, he has become owned by “them” and I feel he has either been told something that changed his mind or he is a flip-flopper on one of the most crucial things happening today in Washigton.

I have found myself becoming less attentive to his show and over the last week or so have not really watched at all. Why? Because he has fallen for the Obama rhetoric and has totally capitulated on a Special Comment regarding the telecom immunity deal that Obama now flip-floppingly supports (his flip-flops are becoming quite regular now).

So Keith has decided that it isn’t so bad now that Obama has capitulated to Big Telecom’s influence and has decided that Mr Obama simply knows something the rest doesn’t and that stopping the civil court process will enable a super-secret Criminal attack when Obama wins. Its all planned and we should believe that they will be held accountable in the future. Just elect him to get it done, I suppose (the carrot dangles before the Progressives, again).

Keith, who still holds some of my admiration, has become just another TV personality. You know, the kind that you can’t trust for anything truthful, but will be controlled by other rationale. They all seem to do it. I still hold out hope for Bill Moyers.

Glenn Greenwald took Keith to task about this and Olbermann replied… thing is, with Glenn, you better have your shit together, for he will proverbially spank you if you bullshit him. I recommend everyone subscribing to his blog.

In his Kos reply, Olbermann pronounces that my piece yesterday was “simplistic and childish” but then adds the standard dismissive Journalist defense: “I don’t know much about Mr. Greenwald and I didn’t read his full piece.” He says that he refrained from criticizing Obama’s support for the FISA bill in reliance on John Dean’s comments, and “John Dean is the smartest person I’ve ever met” and “John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds” — so that settles that (for what it’s worth, I also have a high opinion of Dean’s legal acumen; hosted his appearance at FDL’s Book Salon; don’t disagree with him about this bill at all; have communicated with him about many issues; and he has said many complimentary things about my work in the past, so waving the flag of Dean’s Unassailable Authority establishes nothing).

Olbermman then denies that he was justifying Obama’s support for the FISA bill but then goes on to do exactly that:

Seriously, there is little in the polls to suggest McCain has anything to run with other than terror . . . . So why hand them a brick to hit him with — Obama Voted Against FISA — if voting Aye enhances his chances of getting himself his own Attorney General to prosecute FISA.

How can Olbermann accuse me of distorting his commentary and deny that he’s rationalizing Obama’s support for the bill and then write the above — which does nothing but justify Obama’s support for the bill? That’s exactly the mentality I was criticizing yesterday — that Obama should be excused for supporting this assault on core Constitutional liberties and the rule of law because doing so is necessary to avoid appearing Weak on Terrorism. That’s the behavior which Obama has repeatedly vowed to reject, and it’s that precise mentality that has to be extinguished, not perpetuated.

Isn’t it amazing how Keith finds himself in such a mixed up conundrum? I call it hypocrisy.

to give Obama a pass on his support for such a heinous bill — one which Dean himself describes as a grave assault on the Constitution — based on this imagined secret plan for the Good that Obama is harboring is to illustrate exactly the sort of blind faith in political leaders that is so dangerous. That’s been the Right’s mentality to excuse every last thing Bush does:

It may look to you like Bush is breaking the law or doing something wrong, but he’s a Good person and so we can trust in him that he’s doing it for our own Good, even when he doesn’t tell us why he’s doing it and even when he keeps his real motives a secret. He probably has a good reason for doing these things and we don’t need to know what that is. Besides, we’re facing such an extreme crisis that it’s more important to support him than criticize him even when we don’t understand why he’s doing something and even when we don’t know what it is that he’s doing.

No political leader deserves that sort of blind faith — not Bush and not Obama.

There is so much more in Glenn’s article, but let me finish with the following observation that I totally agree with. I am sick and tired of hearing about chnage in how leadership operates. I want to SEE IT IN ACTION!

As he mentions in his Kos diary, Olbermann had the vocally pro-Obama Markos Moulitsas on his show on Monday night and tried to get Markos to embrace this excuse for Obama. Markos rejected it emphatically:

OLBERMANN: But to the point of the Constitution, John Dean made a fascinating point on this news hour on Friday. He read this bill and he knows a little something about the Constitution, too. He says it’s so sloppily written that nothing in there would rule out later criminal liabilities for the telecom companies.Could that be, actually, what Obama is counting on, just sort of cede this civil action stuff which is basically in lieu of sending these people to jail and just concentrate on, you know, closing up whatever perceived weakness there is of the Democrats being soft on counterterror and, in fact, just hold a bigger punch back until after the election?

MOULITSAS: Well, if that’s the strategy, he has said nothing to indicate that and this is not the sort of thing that I think you have to keep quiet and secretive. I mean, if that’s his strategy, he can say, “This is a bill that’s flawed,” but, really at the end of the day he has a chance to stand for the Constitution and to show that he will protect it against forces that seek to undermine it and he will show that he has, like I said before, that he is a leader and will take the mantle of leadership on this issue and take control of the Democratic Party.

Markos — who observed: “I don’t think he’s going to lose any support, I mean, let’s be honest. I mean, it’s either Obama or John McCain” — nonetheless added:

I think what’s at stake, though, is a lot of the intensity of support for Barack Obama. And he spent the last two years telling us how he’s going to be the leader of the free world, not to mention the Democratic Party and this nation . . . . I don’t want to hear him talk about leadership. I don’t want to hear him talk about defending the Constitution; I want to see him do it.

That is precisely the point, and of course those who believe in defending core constitutional liberties shouldn’t remain quiet when any politician — including Obama — takes actions to erode them.

What’s The Difference between a Tennessee Democrat and Republican? Not Much…

B’Man: h/t Matt at ThinkProgress:

Last week, Fred Hobbs, a state Democratic Party Executive Committee member in Tennessee, told Nashville’s City Paper that for all he knew, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) “may be terrorist connected.” In a letter of apology to the Executive Committee, Hobbs now says he had that “incorrect” impression because he watched Fox News:

Dear State Executive Committee Member:
I am writing to apologize for my recent remarks about Senator Barack Obama.
My statements to various Nashville media were wrong and offensive. I apologize if my remarks in any way hurt any of our great Democratic candidates, including Senator Obama. Also, I apologize if my comments embarrassed our state or my friends at the Tennessee Democratic Party.

I was not as well prepared as I should have been when speaking with reporters, and I should have taken more time to research Senator Obama’s positions. My comments did reflect questions I had after what I had seen reported on Fox News, but I should have taken some time to check the accuracy of what I saw on television before speaking publicly. My statement that Senator Obama “may be terrorist-connected” was incorrect, and I apologize for making it.

B’Man: I don’t give a rat’s ass about Dems or THUGs. But I do care about why rednecks keep voting against their own needs and desires, which, in turn, fucks up my world. I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken to people who claim to be a Dem or Progressive and they only watch Fox News.

I mean, how stupid can one be?

Tim Russert: Where’s The Beef?

B’Man: OK, folks, don’t get angry because I’m going to talk about a dead guy.

I was never a fan of Tim’s. I was never a fan of Meet The Press or any of the NBC political team’s coverage of politics over the last 10 years, especially regarding the MSM’s (and Tim’s) complicity in allowing Iraq to happen without even much of a peep.

MSNBC went a long way to open up to progressives when they hired Keith, but it is evident that they were carrying the Idiot-in-Chief’s lying message all the way up through the illegal invasion of Iraq (and it appears they will say little in regards to the “Iranian threat”) which just so happens to mimic the non-existent Iraqi threat a few years ago.

But it is clear that Russert and all the other talking NBC heads were eagerly regurgitating each and every lie and intentional misleading diversion with hungry, master-satisfying abandon. I hold them just as much accountable for what America was duped into, as I do the actual criminal neocon reTHUGlicans who did this.

I have been hesitant to say much about Tim, because I do not want to attack the man… just the lie that was his on-air persona. Sure, he could ravage a guy over an issue that, in comparison to the lies of Iraq, was meaningless. But, this guy who has been dubbed royalty by NBC punditry, did NOTHING to ask the right questions leading up to this clusterfuck.

I thought that his mediating of the Presidential Debates was atrocious, to put it mildly.

This article below was presented at AlterNet (originally at The Nation):

Tim Russert Blew It on Iraq. So Why Are We Canonizing Him?

By Alexander Cockburn, The Nation

The delirium in the press at Tim Russert’s passing has been strange. As a broadcaster he was not much better than average, which is saying very little. He could be a sharp questioner, but not when it really counted and when courage was required. He was tough with George Bush in a February 2004 interview. He taxed him with faking the reasons to attack Iraq. But in the years before the 2003 attack, I used to hear Russert being merciless to those questioning whether Saddam Hussein had the nukes and bioweapons alleged by the Bush Administration and its co-conspirators in the press, prominent among them Russert himself.

Russert and his staff ignored efforts by watchdogs like Sam Husseini and others to get him to stop telling lies to the effect that it was Saddam who threw out the UNSCOM weapons inspectors, whereas it was Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM, who pulled out the inspectors, apparently at the instigation of the United States. As Husseini correctly writes, “This lie, echoed through much of the political-media system around the time Russert told it, helped set the stage for the invasion after 9/11.”

If Russert had rocked the boat in any serious way he’d have had more enemies. The right-wingers didn’t care for Walter Cronkite, but they had no problem with Russert. Rush Limbaugh nuzzled him respectfully on the air, and so did Don Imus. Russert was always there with his watering can to fertilize myths useful to the system. On Russert’s memorial show Ronald Reagan glowed in memory, up there with FDR as the twentieth century’s best-loved and most popular American President. Not true at all, as Russert — trained to read polls by years of working for Mario Cuomo and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — could have found out in five minutes if he’d wanted to. Reagan had a scrawny 52 percent average approval rating for his presidency, worse than JFK, LBJ, Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Johnson. His supposed “likability” was also hugely exaggerated. But the invention of RR as the toast of the ordinary folk was necessary to validate the disgusting pigout for the very rich he inaugurated, which continues to this day.

Similarly necessary has been the notion that if it means winning the “war on terror,” ordinary Americans are OK with the President (along with the US Congress) making a bonfire of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Russert helped spread that lie too, even though polls dissected in numerous accounts by press watchdogs like FAIR have shown that a narrow majority of Americans hold contrary views on the matter.

Russert spent many years working for Moynihan, who played the greasiest cards in the political deck, whoring for the Israel lobby, race-baiting for Nixon. Few were more zealous than Russert in shredding anyone with the temerity to criticize Israel. Obama, now shuffling Moynihan’s greasy deck with his Father’s Day sermon about black responsibility, got a dose of Russert’s own race-baiting earlier this year, with a ridiculous volley of questions about Farrakhan and Wright in the February 26 debate. Any white telly pundit can make hay with Farrakhan, but when it came to high gasoline prices Russert was meek as a shoeshine boy on his show, lining up the oil execs and tugging his forelock.

After Russert’s death the TV played over and over the clip of his interview with Dick Cheney, where the latter said US troops will be greeted as liberators. Russert didn’t say, “What do you mean, Mr. VP? People historically despise occupying armies. Bombing historically does not win people to your side.” It was a softball moment for Cheney. Russert was part of the amen chorus.

Now, after his death, in congratulating Russert, his eulogists in the press get to congratulate themselves. On Hardball, Chris Matthews decided to have a show much like the one he always has, stacked with Irish Catholic men. This time it was more self-conscious, but the self-consciousness of it only underscored the incredible skewed reality that the show presents day in and day out.

Matthews began with a prayer. “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. [Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.]” Then he introduced guys who are on his show all the time, Mike Barnicle and Pat Buchanan. And the three of them had a kind of Irish wake on the air, laughing, remembering, talking about the importance of parochial school and the values imbued in Tim and all of them by the nuns. On and on they went, about Catholicism and the Irish, and the special quality of Irish Catholics as “truth tellers,” as people who “get the bad guys” — prosecutors, G-men and journalists. Russert was put right up there in the pantheon of FBI agents, without irony, people who delve for the truth, for the light, for the greater good against the “bad guys.” Matthews used that phrase, “bad guys,” over and over. Then he closed the segment with the other half of the prayer: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

Russert, they said, was the guy who always did it better. So it was as if the closing prayer put Tim right there by the side of Mary, an interlocutor to God for the lesser lights, the Chrises and Pats and Mikes, the “sinners” who only strive to be like him.

The TV carried live shots of Russert lying in state, and the mourners could pass by and merely touch the edge of his coffin for a cure, or hope for a cure. This after seven years of craven, culpable journalism across the mainstream board. No one at this point is remembering the reporters at Knight Ridder, who were among the few in the mainstream pre-war to hammer away at the WMD argument. Russert’s colleague-survivors need him as a saint.

B’Man: Amen and amen.

Buelahnomics: Why The US Has Gone Broke

B’Man: You hear me discussbitch about ‘Big Money’ and ‘Big Military’ and all the other ‘Bigs” listed over in the category section. These ‘Bigs’ are the owners of America and what drives everything our government does and is beholden to. What was once ‘for the people’ & ‘by the people’ is now for the Ultra rich and their new corporate citizenship mentality.

However, one of the biggest ‘Bigs’ we have is ‘Big Military’ (aka the military industrial complex) and how this ‘Big’ is probably the leading cause for our country’s demise from ‘leader’ of the ‘free’ world to ‘enforcer’ of the ‘invaded’ world. As with each and every other empire throughout history, this incessant drive towards more military spending as some economic sustaining entity, will simply cause our financial destruction. Essentially, we end up spending money on stuff that never gets used and take away from our own infrastructure and manufacturing base.

As a redneck, I can’t explain it completely, but I do read alot about the subject and found this article that breaks this down as well as any I have read in some time. It is worthy of a full read, but I want to point out some key points for a rednecks education…

Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

by Chalmers Johnson

…There are three broad aspects to the U.S. debt crisis.

First, in the current fiscal year (200 we are spending insane amounts of money on “defense” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic).

By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the U.S. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

B’Man: Our country’s elite, who are in government or control those that are, have grown to be so focused on protecting their stuff that we have insane tax codes in place that are ruining many facets of social assistance. But, more than that, we have completely turned into the “complex” of building our economy from weapons and thus becoming implementers of war and carnage (while still calling ourselves “Christian”, I might add).

Fiscal disaster

It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China.

Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush’s two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the second world war. Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: “A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it.” Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses.

Some 30-40% of the defense budget is ‘black, ‘” meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate. There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand -including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex - - but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect. In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment.

They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the “supplemental” budget to fight the global war on terrorism - - that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional “allowance” (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn. But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the U.S. military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan).

B’Man: With the gas prices at $4.00/gallon and are GOING to rise more, we are in for a very fast fall, folks. The people in control don’t want you to know how close to devastation we are, for when America realizes it, she will shut totally down, causing even more failure within the Big Money system.

Think about how much fuel the Iraqi invasion requires while the price is continually rising (and I would bet, highly elevated prices). Keep in mind that the $4 mark is based off of $90.00/barrel of oil and we just went to around $138/barrel. When the prices catch up, we will be, at least, at $5.00/gallon and likely to be around $6.00/gallon before the summer ends. People are so slow to bitch to those who can help. We bitch at each other about it and shrug, “What are we gonna do?” Then we get into the car and drive off, forgetting that doom is impending.

But it isn’t just us rednecks that can’t drive far or even afford to drive to work any longer. The cost of fuel for food delivery will skyrocket. The cost of fuel to run equipment to gather the crops will skyrocket (making groceries skyrocket even more than we have seen).

People that need to fly will be less able to afford it, even if the airlines make it without total bankruptcy (several have already gone bust), for their costs are skyrocketing, as well. All forms of transportation will skyrocket, for they can